Introduction, literature review and hypotheses

In this brief paper, we use ESS Roud 8 data of 2016 to analyse the relationship between education level and climate change belief. A Gallup analysis with a world poll pointed out that education is the strongest predictor of believing in climate change (Lee et al. 2015). People with a higher degree tend to be more concerned about climate change, while, on the other hand, this value slightly decreases while the education achieved decreases. So, it is possible to assume that education is a good predictor of people’s awareness and beliefs of climate change (Hornsey et al. 2016).

Based on previous studies, we formulate the following hypothesis:
H1: Highly educated people are more aware of climate changes than lower educated ones.

Data and method

This analysis will mainly focus on two variables: educ_level and climate_chng. Educ_level has been recoded from the eisced variable in ESS8 Dataset. It is codified with seven education categories harmonised amongst all countries included in the survey. One represents the lowest category and seven the highest. Climate_chng has been recoded from the clmchng variable. It answers the question, “Do you think world’s climate is changing?” and it is codified with four levels, where one stays for “definitely changing” and four stays for “definitely not changing.” To test our hypothesis, we will use one method. We will make a linear regression model which will include the education level as the independent variable and the climate change belief as the dependent variable (Crona et al. 2013).

Results

Figure 1. Mean climate change belief for Education levels
Climate~Educ plot

Figure 1 shows the mean level of belief by education level; it is possible to observe that with an educational level between 1 and 5, the climate change belief is about 1.55 in each case. Those are reasonably high values, and no one tends not to believe. On the other hand, focusing on the two highest values of educational level, six and seven, the means of climate change falls to 1.45, showing a possible correlation between a higher level of education and a stronger belief in climate change.

Table 1. Linear regression model predicting climate change belief
  Do you think world's
climate is changing
Predictors Estimates CI p
(Intercept) 1.54 1.52 – 1.57 <0.001
educ level [2] 0.00 -0.03 – 0.03 0.954
educ level [3] -0.00 -0.03 – 0.02 0.770
educ level [4] 0.01 -0.02 – 0.03 0.669
educ level [5] 0.00 -0.02 – 0.03 0.753
educ level [6] -0.11 -0.14 – -0.08 <0.001
educ level [7] -0.09 -0.12 – -0.06 <0.001
Observations 43092
R2 / R2 adjusted 0.004 / 0.004

report

Table 1 shows the results of the linear regression model. As we can notice, the regression shows a negative correlation between the two variables; as the level of education increases, the mean value of climate change belief decreases.1 It is also possible to say that the belief in climate change is firm for each education level. Although, we can note that the results are statistically significant just in the two highest education levels.

Conclusion

In this short research, we tried to confirm what the researches mentioned above stated: education and climate change appear to be strongly correlated. However, this relationship does not seem to be as strong as expected. Conversely, other scholars pointed out that education is not the sole explanatory factor. Political and cultural identification appears to be correlated as well (McCright, Dunlap, and Marquart-Pyatt 2016). For this reason, more in-depth analyses are required to understand better which factors interact with the belief in climate change.

References

Crona, Beatrice, Amber Wutich, Alexandra Brewis, and Meredith Gartin. 2013. “Perceptions of Climate Change: Linking Local and Global Perceptions Through a Cultural Knowledge Approach.” Climatic Change 119.
Hornsey, Matthew J., Emily A. Harris, Paul G. Bain, and Kelly S. Fielding. 2016. “Meta-Analyses of the Determinants and Outcomes of Belief in Climate Change.” Nature Climate Change 6.
Lee, Tien Ming, Ezra M. Markowiz, Peter D. Howe, Chia-Ying Ko, and Anthony A. Leiserowitz. 2015. “Predictors of Public Climate Change Awareness and Risk Perception Around the World.” Nature Climate Change 5.
McCright, Aaron M., Riley E. Dunlap, and Sandra T. Marquart-Pyatt. 2016. “Political Ideology and Views about Climate Change in the European Union.” Environmental Politics 25.

  1. Decreasing in mean value means more sensitivity towards climate change.↩︎